Hello everyone!
I’m based throughout Latin America and it seems that there’s a lot of basic application opportunity that could go a long way here with enough navigation of the way things are done down here… I have a question though. In terms of payments, it seems like PayPal and Stripe are the only payment processors–to my knowledge, both of whom don’t operate in these countries.
I am wondering what is the solution (if any) to design an application where Mexican, Paraguayan, Peruvian or Uruguayan users would be able to pay for a service provided. I’m sure others have had this problem–how did you go about it?
Thank you!
Matt
i’m from south america and i use and recommend ‘wise’, great service, lower taxes
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Hi Matt, I’ve been developing a marketplace in Colombia recently and faced similar issues.
In terms of taking payments, Stripe can receive payments in most Latin American currencies:
When stripe say they don’t operate in certain countries, what they mean is that a Colombian business for example, couldn’t setup a stripe account and start taking payments. However, if you have a US business you can accept payments from a Colombian customer for example. You can see what currencies a US stripe account can accept here:
Where it gets tricky is if you want to setup a marketplace where you are taking payments and paying them out to seller in Latam countries.
The banking system seems a lot more closed in Latam than in Europe or US. For example in Colombia I’ve only been able to find local solutions that require you to setup a business account in Colombia in order to payout to Colombian sellers.
The platform I’ve been working on is a mix of mainly Colombian and US sellers, so the workaround has been to take payments for US sellers through Stripe and run payments for Colombian sellers through the local processer (in this case Wompi). Another popular Latam payment processor is PayU, they operate across Latam, but from what I understand, have similar constraints around cross-border payouts.
Hi There Mr. Lowe,
Sorry for replying now–thanks for getting back to me. Good to hear (sort of) that I’m not the only one with this thought.
Yes so the trouble I see is acquiring the account first of all, given that Stripe only operates in high tax/regulated places and I’m trying to diversify away from the USA. I want to design a marketplace for a gig economy (cleaning, cooking, babysitting, tech help, etc.) so you reckon it’d be best to try to chop it up bit by bit (USA with Stripe; Wompi in Colombia; Global 66 in Chile, etc. etc.) to enter each market
The problem is I don’t want to have to incorporate company after company just to gain access to the market too haha.
or would it not be a problem since the payment is always local (Carlos is paying Maria in the city of Cuenca) and not cross-border. And on bubble theres only PayPal and Stripe, right?
In this sense, perhaps its better to avoid Stripe all together?
Cheers!
